


Unless Acted Upon by an External Force

by AstroGirl



Category: The Orville (TV)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Episode Related, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 07:10:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18244919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: It is an unprecedented circumstance: Isaac no longer has a directive.





	Unless Acted Upon by an External Force

**Author's Note:**

> I just binged-watched the entire series thus far, and it turns out I have Thoughts and Feelings about Isaac after "Identity" parts 1 and 2. I also have a Gen Prompt Bingo square labeled "conversation." Those two things led almost inevitably to this. Although I won't be the least surprised if it ends up getting jossed in one way or another.

It is an unprecedented circumstance: Isaac no longer has a directive.

Since his creation, he has always had a purpose, a function. Until recently, his function was to gather data on organic lifeforms. That function has now been completed. Even if his people desired more information on the subject, he would not be willing to provide it, nor they to accept it from him.

The phrase that comes to his mind is a human one, typical of their vague habits of speech. He does not know "what to do." 

While it is generally unreasonable to expect organics to have the capacity to resolve a question he himself cannot answer, he nevertheless puts his inquiry to the captain.

"Seeing as the Union has approved you staying on the _Orville_ , I'd say that's your best option." 

Isaac is aware of the alternatives. He sees no reason to prefer Union interrogation over remaining in this place to which his algorithms have adapted. But, while accurate, he does not regard the captain's response as adequate. "And what will be my function?"

The captain's face takes on an expression that Isaac has learned to interpret as mild surprise. A familiar enough expression on this particular face. "Well, you'd remain as the science officer."

"Will that be my only occupation?" He doubts the human's inferior intelligence will understand the context behind the query, but he is not certain how to address the subject more clearly. For all that the Kaylon had deemed his intelligence-gathering adequate, there remain gaps in his knowledge.

But, in this instance, the captain's feeble neural processors prove up to the task. "Well, that's up to you, Isaac. You're a free... entity. Do whatever you want to do. Although we'd appreciate, y'know, not invading us again."

He assures the captain that this is not his intent. He does not share the fact that he still does not know what his intent is. As he leaves the captain's office, he reflects on the fact that, for all his people's concerns about enslavement by organics, he is less subject to outside control and direction now than before his separation from the Kaylon. No doubt this is what the humans would term "irony."

In any case, it does not answer his question. "Whatever you want" is an undefined variable. He must define it. Perhaps the most parsimonious solution is to retain his pre-programmed default. Data collection may no longer be his directive, but he has found significant satisfaction in performing that function. In the absence of a more compelling agenda, he may simply continue his studies. The drive towards curiosity that was installed in him for his assignment, while it no longer serves any external purpose, need not be removed.

There is, however, a respect in which this solution is sub-optimal, and this flaw becomes increasingly difficult to accommodate as the cycles pass and his store of data continues to grow. The flaw is this: his imperative towards curiosity is inextricably linked with an imperative to communicate his findings. His inability to do so threatens to destabilize programming that has already become dangerously disrupted by the termination – temporary or permanent, he still does not know – of his relationship with Doctor Finn and the concomitant removal of stimuli he has come to rely upon.

But then, while sitting in the mess hall and observing the behavior of his shipmates, an insight occurs to him. Organics, he has observed, speak to each other far more frequently and at far greater length than is necessary for situational communication. They share passing thoughts and observations, irrelevant details of their lives and speculations about the lives of others. He has often noted this behavior, but never truly understood it. Could it be that their minds are more similar to his than he has assumed? Presumably they, too, experience the drive to share the data they have acquired, and to acquire data about others. The evolutionary advantages to this for an organic lifeform are obvious. But speech is such a limited and inefficient means of data exchange. It has never occurred to him to equate their desire for it to his own drives and functions. Perhaps this was an oversight. Could their means of fulfilling these imperatives be of some use in satisfying his own?

In light of these questions, he reviews his past interactions and finds one specific memory acquiring a high relevance value: Claire telling him, "I don't know who you are. I never did." It is true, and not merely because his mission required a degree of deception. He shared a great deal of data with Kaylon 1. He has shared very little with her. Upon reanalysis informed by his changed circumstance, this would now appear to be the reverse of what is desirable.

He comes to her door when he knows the children will be absent. He does not need the complicating variable of their presence.

Her demeanor is not welcoming. He has expected this. "Hello, doctor," he says. 

"Isaac, I've told you. I don't know how long it's going to take to forgive you, and and I don't know if we can ever go back to what we had, so if you're here to try to... to force the issue..." 

She does not complete the statement. He gives her an ample amount of time to do so before he speaks. "I understand. I assure you, I am not here to persuade you to resume our sexual relationship. Although if at any point you wish to do so, I am amenable."

Her eyes narrow by 0.46 centimeters. "Well, then why are you here?"

"I am here," he says, "to talk."

"To talk?" Her eyes remain narrowed. He can feel connections between his algorithms strengthening in response to the familiarity of the expression.

For .017 cycles, she stares at him, silently. Then she moves aside, making space in the doorway for him to enter her quarters.

He follows her.

 

**

Claire sits down and gestures Isaac to take a seat across from her. Sometimes if you don't prompt him, he'll just keep standing, and it's unnerving to have to keep looking up at him.

"All right," she says as he settles himself neatly into the chair. "Talk."

"Where would you like me to begin?" he says.

She closes her eyes for a moment. She's tired. She doesn't want to do this. And she can't ask the question she really wants to ask. _Did you ever love me, Isaac?_ It's a ridiculous question. He either wouldn't understand it, or the answer would be no, and she already knows that. She understood that from the beginning, that love as humans think of it isn't part of what Isaac is. But she'd thought... Well, she'd thought perhaps something else might substitute for it in him. That that insatiable curiosity of his, that enthusiastic drive to learn and understand and participate in the human experience, might connect them in its own way.

But she knows now what that drive was in service of. Every time she thinks of that, it feels like gravel in her chest, grinding against her heart.

"I don't know, Isaac," she says. "You're the one who wanted to talk. Maybe just start at the beginning."

"I see," he says. "The beginning. Very well. I was constructed one thousand three hundred twenty-seven standard years ago on Kaylon 1. My initial purpose was to collect data on astronomy and planetary geology, but when we became aware of the existence of the Union, I was re-purposed to study organics."

Claire really isn't sure she wants to hear his life story right now, even though a month ago she would have been fascinated by it. Probably it means something that he's choosing to share it now, but she has no idea what, and focusing on that takes more mental energy and self-control than her tired mind feels like it has to spare. But he has just answered a question she's wondered about and never found the right moment to ask. "So, you're over a thousand years old?"

"One thousand three hundred twenty-seven. Although it would be more accurate to also include the seven hundred years I resided on the multiphasic planet."

"Over two thousand, then. Well." A faint thread of humor surfaces through her exhaustion. "I always assumed you must be older than me, even if you never looked it." The human face he wore in the simulator flashes through her mind. Younger than hers, and beautiful in a way that seemed so very _him_. She pushes it away.

"By the standards of my own people," he says. "I am extremely young."

She manages a laugh. It surprises her. "Great, on top of everything else, I'm some kind of robot cradle-robber."

"I am sorry. I do not understand."

She shakes her head. "Never mind."

"Is there anything else you wish to know, doctor?" Doctor. There was a time, in private moments, when he called her "Claire." She didn't ask him to revert to "doctor" when she told him their relationship needed to go back to being a professional one. He decided that all on his own. It's a pretty good reading of the social circumstances, she supposes. She actually feels a little proud of him.

She hates that she wishes he would go back to calling her "Claire."

Fuck it. She's going to ask him what she really wants to ask him. Not "Did you ever love me?," obviously. The other thing. She leans forward and looks him directly in the spots that she knows aren't actually his eyes. 

"Did you know? From the beginning? Did you know your people were trying to decide whether to kill us all?" She knows the answer. She's pretty sure she does. But she wants to hear it from him.

"Yes," he says.

"And all the... the data you sent, all the experiences you had with us." She clamps down hard on the images her brain tries to flood her with. "All of them. You were sending them back to people who might use that information to wipe us out. You had no problem with that. It was just your _job_."

"Yes," he says again. And that's it, that's what he does. Just the simplest answers to the most painful questions, and he thinks that's all he needs to say.

Well. Maybe he's right. Claire squeezes her eyelids shut for a moment and wills away the tears she can feel building up behind them. In a moment, she will work up the willpower to ask him to leave.

But when she opens her eyes again, something is different. She doesn't know what. Something in the tilt of his expressionless face, in the angle of his expressive hands. Something that tugs obscurely at her heart.

And he continues to speak. "I wish you to know," he says. "I did not believe that the data I collected would lead to a decision to exterminate you. In my assessment, it argued convincingly against the idea that you were a threat and in favor of the value of keeping you alive for further study."

A laugh escapes her, brittle and incredulous. "Wait... You thought you were _saving_ us when you were spying on us? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

He almost seems to hesitate, as if he hadn't quite thought of it that way. "That would have been the most logical outcome. I failed, however, to correctly estimate the impact of personal experience on the oldest members of my race. It would seem this is a larger factor in decision-making processes than I anticipated."

"You thought you were saving us," she says again, tasting the words in her mouth, trying to understand them. She feels... She doesn't even know what she feels. A churning chaos of contradictory emotions.

She doesn't know what to do with this. It doesn't make anything simpler. It just makes the whole mess even more complicated.

"That doesn't change the fact that you lied," she says.

"No. It does not."

"It doesn't change the fact that you were helping them."

"It does not."

And here is the other question, the one she's been wrestling with all this time. "Why, Isaac," she says, the words choking a little in her throat. "Why _did_ you change your mind? Why did you switch sides? Don't tell me it's because you love Ty like a son." _Please tell me_ , some part of her begs, _that it's because you love Ty like a son._

"There were multiple factors," he says. "A variety of disparate programs whose outputs came together to cause a cascade of reinforcing conclusions sufficient to cross a decision threshold."

This is Isaac. This is probably not him evading the question. Probably.

"Think you can summarize those for me?" she says dryly.

He tilts his head slightly, as if he is thinking. An affectation that, damn her, she still can't help but find endearing. 

"To express it as concisely as possible: I came to the realization that you have value. Sufficient value to be worth the sacrifice of both myself and the Kaylon fleet."

"Value. What, me personally, or organic life in general?"

"Both," he says.

"To you personally, or to the universe in general?"

"Both," he says.

This time, the simplicity of his answer doesn't annoy her. She feels something stirring deep in her heart. Something she doesn't quite trust, but doesn't want to lose.

She reaches out and takes his hand. Without hesitation, the cool mechanical fingers fold over hers. God, she's missed his touch.

"Thank you for telling me that," she says.

He says nothing, but squeezes her hand in response. The amount of pressure is perfectly calibrated. Comforting and strong, but not too strong. He has learned what she needs from this extremely well. He hasn't forgotten it.

"I still don't know where we go from here," she says.

"I understand."

It occurs to her, finally, to ask something she should have asked a very long time ago. "What do _you_ want, Isaac? What do you want to happen next?"

His fingers flex slightly against hers, their motions precise and calming. "That is a very broad question," he says. "Can you be more specific?"

"No, I can't," she says. "You narrow it down. Pick something you want to tell me."

"Very well." He's silent for an uncharacteristically long moment. She wonders if it's really taking that long for him to answer the question.

"I am alone," he says at last. "I wish not to be alone. I desire someone to talk to. To share my experiences with. To attempt to understand, and to be understood by another, to the extent that this is possible. I do not know anyone who can fulfill that function other than you." 

It's not an "I love you." Maybe she doesn't even want it to be, not really. Not yet. But it splashes across her heart like rain. A small sound rises in her throat.

Unexpectedly, he continues. "You said before that you did not know me. I believe that assessment was correct. It is a circumstance that I now wish to alter. That is the reason I am here. I wish for you to know me. "

"I think," she says, tremblingly, when she can speak again. "Isaac, I think that... That would be a very good place to start."

"Thank you, Claire," he says. And then, like an offering, like a gift: "I am... grateful. This is highly meaningful to me."

"Me too," she says. "It's meaningful to me, too."

Her hand tightens on his, and he does not let go.


End file.
